Consensus-Building Workshops to Uncover New Market Entry Decision Factors for the Sheet Metal Engineering and Construction Industry

For an engineering or construction firm, the decision to enter a new market sector (e.g., add a trade or service, expand geographically) is a complex undertaking, particularly since the industry-specific literature provides little guidance on how to navigate these market entry decisions. This research uses an original design for consensus-building workshops to identify and prioritize 23 market entry decision factors collected from the literature and from experiential knowledge of over 130 industry experts. The industry consensus resulting from the workshops leads to the identification of decision factors for four types of market entry. Data analysis reveals that the following eight essential factors are always important regardless of the market entry decision type: competition in the market, competitive advantage, strategic fit, experience and abilities of the champion, investment capital, market need, profit projections, and start-up costs. The workshop design developed for this study represents an original and simple approach for synthesizing the experience and practical knowledge of several industry experts. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by identifying for the first time the eight most important factors for engineering and construction firms to consider when assessing a new, domestic market entry. Working independently, only 2 out of 108 individuals identified the top two most important factors to market entry success, indicating that the industry's collective knowledge is not as obvious to individuals making market entry decisions, and further highlighting the contribution of this paper.